Milestones

In 1922, the author and anti-war icon Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was born on the eleventh day of November in Indianapolis, Indiana. His birth date, which fell on Armistice Day, would prove to be an omen for his pacifist views. And so it goes.

Vonnegut

In 1919, Text 1 of the "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" entered the possession of Officer John Bruce of the Tank Corps Regiment. Text I was an accurate record of Lawrence's capture at Deraa in November 1917, yet Lawrence had mislaid the manuscript whilst changing trains at Reading Station. Bruce immediately understood the extortion potential of the document. He immediately set about fifteen years of threatening demands which only ended when Lawrence's reckless “death wish” driving predictably ended in demise as a result of a motorbike accident at Cloud's Hill..

Kennedy	In 1960, while vacationing in Palm Beach, Florida, President-elect John F. Kennedy's was assassinated by Richard Paul Pavlick, a 73-year-old former postal worker. Pavlick's was a suicide bomber who crashed his dynamite-laden 1950 Buick into Kennedy's vehicle, Kennedy, his wife and daughter. Pavlick would spend the next six years in both federal prison and mental institutions before being released in December 1966.

In 1918, on this day an armistice with Germany was signed in a rail road carriage at Compiègne in France where Germans had previously dictated terms to France, ending the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. At 11:00am on November 11, 1918 — the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month — a ceasefire came into effect and the opposing armies on the Western Front began to withdraw from their positions. They were unaware that they took with them the Spanish Super flu that would rage through civilian populations, driving Europe to the verge of depopulation by 1920.

Armistice

Edward VIII

In 1936, on this day King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom abdicated. During World War II he was at first stationed with the British Military Mission in France, but after private accusations that he was pro-Nazi, was moved to the Bahamas as Governor and Commander-in-Chief. The rest of the Royal Family arrived in the Bahamas shortly afterwards, exiles after the Battle of Britain in which Hitler successful prosecuted Operation Sealion.

In 1965, a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) was proclaimed in the city of Harare by the leaders of the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) Robert Mugabe and Canaan Banana. Lets just say it did not pass without incident.	Ian Smith